


the palest sound

by dollylux



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cold Weather, Horror, M/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 03:14:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8873575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollylux/pseuds/dollylux
Summary: John, Dean, and Sam stay overnight in an abandoned Victorian house for a case.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [intrepidheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intrepidheart/gifts).



> day three of the 12 days of xmas. prompt: [this photo.](https://68.media.tumblr.com/fd34d3b496f1fe542d9134800cb828e7/tumblr_oib5g5WbwN1qzmxr0o1_540.jpg)
> 
> for madison, the girl with the sweetest of hearts. <3

“Sammy, can you start a fire, please?”

Dean glances over from where he’s spreading out the sleeping bags on the dusty, rain-swollen floor to see Sam’s thin shoulders tense where he’s standing in the open doorway, overlooking the desolate sprawl of the front yard and the track that runs through it.

“Sure, Dad,” Sam says, flat and bored, like all twelve years olds are. He had been excited about the abandoned trolley parked on the tracks only feet from this crumbling Victorian relic, and Dad had immediately forbidden him to even step foot on it.

“There’s weird shit goin’ on here, Sam,” Dad had said, tired eyes narrowed at the most beautiful, sullen face to ever exist. “We’re not gonna get separated. Help your brother unload the car. Not another word.”

Sam starts a fire in their portable firepit with the expertise of a forest ranger or the son of a survivalist, and it doesn’t take long for them to gather up around it, seeking warmth on their frozen hands.

Whatever supernatural bastard is hanging out up here had killed the engine to the Impala about halfway up the long drive, and in the deep dead of winter, there’s not a single sound outside, nothing but the crackle-pop of the fire and Dad’s clockwork sighs.

They’ll start poking around in the morning, and Dean is still working on talking Dad into leaving Sam out of it. He’s still too little, at least as far as Dean is concerned, and he doesn’t want to spend time worrying about where Sam is when he should be working.

He looks up at Dad, at the way the shadows jump on his face as the fire grows and brightens, and he wishes in the quietest thought that Dad would just leave, go somewhere, anywhere, and leave them here.

Dean’ll find the ghost or demon or whatever and smoke ‘em out, no problem. Then there’d be this big beautiful place that just needs a little love, and Sammy could turn the trolley outside into a kind of--

“You get first watch,” Dad says to Dean, lifting up from his crouch in front of the fire with creaky knees and another sigh. He disappears into the darkness of the room, lowering down onto a sleeping bag, the sound of a glass bottle echoing as it’s set on the floor.

Sam keeps his eyes down on the fire, pouting even though Dad’s not around to see it. He pouts a lot for Dean too nowadays, and even when Dean’s joking around like a goddamn circus clown, he can’t even pull a smile out of Sam.

“Get some sleep, Sammy,” Dean says, holding in a Dad-sounding sigh and grabbing his leather jacket off the pile of bags to head to the porch.

People have been found hanging from trees in the woods all around this house, in a neat, nearly perfect ring. Their clothes had been tied together and are now encircling the house, attached between trees like they’re holding hands. The circle is nearly complete, only a space now where the driveway eases up to the house. 

Dean’s convinced it’s a serial killer, but Dad has that eerie feeling in his bones that he gets sometimes that it’s not, that this is their kinda thing. Dean doesn’t really know which one is more comforting, not at 1am when he’s sitting on the porch in the dark at ground zero.

He settles into the one creaking rocking chair, tense while he makes sure that the thing can hold his weight after years of becoming brittle on this porch. It holds and he relaxes, propping a salt-packed shotgun against the house and resting the Beretta on his thigh. It started to snow sometime between getting into the house and now, and it’s making a lazy, pretty blanket over the scorched grass, the skeleton of flowerbeds that look like nothing more than graveyards. It’s cold, freezing out, and the bite of the wind is enough to nearly take his breath.

There’s a creak of wood right next to him and his hand snaps to his gun as he looks over, fierce eyes piercing the dark. Sam is there, bundled in one of Dean’s old hoodies and Dad’s jacket, holding an armful of army blankets and looking young enough to break Dean’s heart.

“Sam, get on in the house, okay? It’s freezin’ out here. I don’t want you gettin’ sick.” He tries to sound authoritative but just Sam’s presence is comforting, is something familiar and needed in a place inside his chest that Dean hasn’t quite figured out yet. He shifts in the chair when Sam drops the blankets to the ground at Dean’s feet and starts to burrow down into them, his head resting on top of Dean’s boot instead of a pillow.

“Babe,” Dean whispers, aching, a word he shouldn’t let out. He closes his eyes when Sam just tucks up tighter, buried beneath scratchy blankets, arms wrapped around Dean’s legs. There’s no fighting this, no making Sam leave.

He’s made his choice.

Dean swallows hard, hands tightening around the gun in his lap. His eyes refocus on the whitening stretch of land in front of the house, on his task of staying awake for three hours, trying his damnedest not to think about the warm press of Sam’s sweet face against his dirty, tired boots.

 

When Dean wakes up, his feet are cold.

The snow is falling harder now, several inches coating the ground and hiding the gravel drive. Dean blinks a few times to let his eyes adjust, and he finds himself staring across the yard at one very particular thing that isn’t the way it was before he’d fallen asleep.

The circle of clothes is now complete.

He’s up like a shot, gun shoved into his pocket, eyes straining in the nearly new moonlight as his heart rate kicks up to a dangerous speed. It’s hard to be sure, but Dean feels it in his bones, knows without knowing: his own hoodie and Dad’s jacket, completing the chain.

Sammy.

Dean stumbles over his own feet as he rushes back into the house where the fire has gone out, the embers glowing in the pit. He can see his breath in the faint light from the window as he searches the room, finding only the curled lump of Dad and not the little one of Sam. Not anywhere.

“Sammy,” he whispers fiercely, hating the fear in his voice.

Nothing answers him but Dad’s deep breathing, but the drag of a snore as he shifts in his sleep. Dean grabs a flashlight from the bag near the door and snatches up the shotgun and hurries off the porch and into the night.

There aren’t footprints, nothing at all disrupting the pristine, quiet white or giving him any indication of where Sam went.

The click of the flashlight sends a stream of bright light across the yard, and nothing in the world could keep Dean from rushing off the porch, down the steps, and into the snow.

He nears the edge of the woods, the tied link of clothes tangled with tree branches, and holds his breath. Listens. The wind is blowing sharp and vicious, numbing Dean’s hands and the tips of his ears, but there’s nothing else; no quiet whimper from Sam, no shout for help, no creak-swing of rope.

“Sam!” he shouts, the word echoing through the trees, breaking apart into a hundred more and skittering into the dark. There’s a dress in front of him, the hem of it tied to the sleeve of a cable-knit sweater and one sleeve of it tied to a Yankees t-shirt. They’re all frozen and heavy now, barely swaying as the wind whips through them. 

He ducks beneath the dress and into the woods, his strained eyes frantic as he begins his search.

The circle takes him nearly an hour to complete, and he’s shivering by the time he’s done, his nose running warm above his lip, his hands a dangerous shade of red as he steps numbly out from the woods and back into the yard.

He turns to stare at his hoodie tied to Dad’s jacket, and the sudden scent of Sam’s skin wafts up at him from them, stirring him from his near catatonia and making him suck in a sudden, panicked breath as it hits him:

Sam’s not here.

He rushes back through the snow and up into the house, tears blurring his eyes when he sees that Dad is still asleep, snoring loudly inside his sleeping bag. The urge to wake him up nearly wins out, but the thought of having to tell Dad he’s lost Sam, that he fell asleep and let this happen makes his stomach clench up, fear-sweat breaking out under his clothes.

No. No, he has to finish this himself.

He walks back outside and onto the porch, down the steps, and looks to the right.

The bizarrely-placed, abandoned trolley car stands silent and snow-laden so near to the house, stopped on tracks that don’t lead anywhere, not anymore. The door is open on it, tall and pitch black in all the white. He walks toward it like he’s being led there, pulled there, shotgun gripped in his trembling hand.

The trolley has been stripped almost completely bare by now, the inside of it graffitied until no word is distinguishable from another, until it’s a blur of color from the ceiling to the floor. There are empty beer cans and fast food cups and a stray flip-flop, nothing of import except the mattress at the very back of the car.

Sam is sitting straight up on the mattress in his white undershirt, army blankets draped over his lap like he was placed there, so carefully, tucked in by someone who wanted him to stay warm.

Dean rushes through the car, the squeak of it swaying on the tracks following him until he stops in front of the filthy mattress and drops to his knees in front of his little brother, gun and flashlight falling from his hands, the light bouncing off the walls as it rolls away.

He grips Sam’s frozen face in his ice-cold hands and brings their faces together, pink-tipped, numb noses touching.

 _”Sammy_ , Jesus fucking Christ,” Dean sobs, digging his forehead in hard enough to bruise before he starts to cover Sam’s face in kisses, his mouth still somehow warm on death-cold skin. “Don’t you ever do that again. Don’t you _ever_ \--”

“He’s gone,” Sam says, soft, almost dreamy. A tone that is not Sam’s at all, like the words were dropped on his tongue. A message. “Don’t worry, Dean. He’s gone now.”

“Who’s gone?” Dean demands, thumbs stroking over the icy apples of Sam’s cheeks, trying to look him over, to search his eyes in the near complete darkness. “Who did this? How did you get in here? Why are your clothes--”

“They weren’t my clothes,” Sam replies, his lashes tickling as they drag over Dean’s cheeks, his breath warm on Dean’s skin. So warm. “They weren’t mine. He’s gone.”

Dean growls in frustration, his hands sliding down to either side of Sam’s neck. Sam moves easily when Dean shakes him, just once, so pliant and soft, like he’d been cut from strings and dropped right here.

“I don’t understand,” Dean pleads, his hands traveling obsessively now, rubbing at Sam’s naked arms, trying to warm him up as he knees up onto the mattress, crowding him against the back of the car. “Baby, please. Talk to me. Explain it to me. I don’t understand--”

“He said I could sleep here. He said I can, if I want to.” The wet of Sam’s eyes glitters in the dark as he looks up at Dean. “Will you stay with me tonight? Will you stay here, Dean?”

“Y-Yeah,” Dean finally says, swallowing hard as he nuzzles at Sam’s face, kissing errant and desperate at the point of his jaw, at the dance of his pulse in his pale throat. “Course. Anything, Sammy. Hey, anything for you, alright? C’mere. C’mon in here.”

Dean pulls Sam into him as he climbs up onto the nest of the bed, ignoring the smell of death and rot and mold on it, ignoring the terrifying quiet inside this car, ignoring the way the snow just won’t stop falling and the fact that they might freeze to death before morning, ignoring all of it to burrow down under the blankets and hide Sam between his body and the wall, covering him up until he can’t be seen, only felt, and only felt by Dean.

It’s alright. He’s gone now.


End file.
